Kat's Rantings, Ravings and Whatever

If I know you personally and haven't invited you here -- well, there's a reason for that, so kindly go on back to whichever part of my life you belong in. Trust me, this is for your own good. Thank you.

Friday, October 26, 2007

Reviews of Control

“Control” tells a sad story that is also a chronicle of success, and it declines to find an easy moral either in Joy Division’s rapid rise or in its lead singer’s early death. These are things that happened, both on the intimate stage of individual life and in the larger arena of popular culture. Mr. Corbijn, no doubt aware of what this movie will mean to devotees of post-punk melancholy, sticks to the human dimensions of the narrative rather than turning out yet another show business fable. You don’t have to know anything about Joy Division to grasp the mysterious sorrow at its heart.

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Control Nominated for 10 BIFAs

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Crazy Woman in Sheboygan

I can't believe it's only Tuesday. Why does this week feel like it should be Friday??? Maybe because I'm so looking forward to Friday as noted in my previous post? (GO AND READ IT! Please, pretty please...) I'm thinking Maybe!

Anyway, the charming Babs asked to hear my Sheboygan story. I don't remember if I told it last year when it happened, and I'm too damn lazy to go looking.

HRH and I were in Wisconsin for the CCWS race and actually got a hotel room in Sheboygan which is as close to Road America as you can get w/o staying in Elkhart Lake which only has some fancy-ass resort which we can't afford. Anyway, we went driving east on what I think is the main street in Sheboygan in order to see Lake Michigan. We get to the end of the road and it dead ends (obviously). HRH thinks she can get a better view if she pulls into this driveway (she thought it was some sort of hotel or commercial building, I knew it was a fancy-shmancy house). She pulls all the way up and even makes the turn in front of the 75-car garage and realises that there wasn't a good view of the lake after all (thank God, because she would have gotten out of the car, she told me). In the driveway of this fancy-shmancy house is a Shania Twain type tour bus and some woman was in the tour bus watching a movie on a TV screen bigger than the TV in my house (why she wasn't in the house is an excellent question, but we did not ask it). We know she was in there, because she came out and stood in front of the car to stop us from leaving. She was beside herself that we had turned around in her driveway and she yelled at us for a long time. HRH, for all her sarcasm and smart assness, can be remarkably polite and conciliatory when needed and she was at her best that night, but it was all for naught. This woman was just incensed that we had turned around in her driveway.

Now, it's not like we're teenagers or 20-somethings in a beat-up car. We're two 40-somethings in a Mini-Cooper. She was going on and on and on about how dare we treat her driveway like that. I mean, it was ridiculous. HRH explained that she didn't realise it was a home and that she had wanted to see the lake, etc. I swear to you, the woman nearly lost her mind. As we tried to leave, she went and stood in front of us (after telling us never to come to her house again or she'd call the police) and that's when she noticed the Ontario license plate. She realised that we were what we had said, and that we probably wouldn't be back to her stupid house (although it's tempting) and she let us go, but with a final word of warning about not coming back to her house ever again. We stopped at a Burger King just down the road and I so badly wanted to send the teenager standing there waiting for the bus to her house, just to freak her out all over again, but didn't want to the poor kid to get into trouble. I have been tempted to tell all non-Wisconsites who visit Sheboygan to go to this woman's house and turn around in her driveway, just to put her over the edge. Sadly, I can't do that since I don't remember the name of the street. I just think if I owned that nice of a house, that I'd be in it not the bloody tour bus in the driveway.

Joy Division & Control

This Friday evening I will be crying. There are no ifs, ands or buts about it. The Joy Division movie, Control opens here in Detroit and I'm going that night with BST. We're both planning on going again on Sunday because most of our friends can't go on Friday night, but we can't wait.

I know I'll be crying because every time I see the trailer, I cry. I can't even imagine making it through the whole movie, but I will because Joy Division is my favorite band of all time and I have read every book about them and even bought the reissued LPs recently even though I don't even own a record player. They were so incredibly beautiful and I'm such a JD geek that I had to have them. The CDs will be reissued next week and I'll be buying them as well. Each comes with a previously unreleased concert. MUST HAVE.

Here is actual footage from a Joy Division concert. The sound is kind of crap and it's not my favorite song, although it's been covered at least a couple of times. I know Grace Jones covered it years ago.

And this is their most well-known song, Love Will Tear Us Apart, which are the words on his gravestone. One of my biggest dreams is to get to Macclesfield, England and visit Ian's grave. I know a guy who has a picture of it in his wallet. Yup, it too makes me cry.

This is my absolutely favorite Joy Division song. The video was done after Ian had died and was directed by Anton Corbijn who directed the movie. The pictures of Ian used in the video were taken by Anton himself. He is a brilliant photographer, as well as video (and now movie) director and took many of the iconic pictures of Ian.

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

2007-08 Hockey Pool Draft & Rollins

I'm back from Maine where I had an absolutely fabulously brilliant time! It was gorgeous (pics, I swear, once I get that infernal external hard drive and can download them) and fun and just so lovely.

We had some weather issues coming home and ended up barely making our connection to Detroit in DC. I was a tad stressed, but we made it and for that I was thankful. I did not wish to spend the night in DC.

Saturday was Hockey Pool Draft Day or as GtG likes to call it "The Best Day of the Year." I drafted 2nd which is sad when I tell you that I'm in 6th place (two up from yesterday, but still). For the few hockey fans who read my stuff, here is my team until halfway through the season when we get to drop the non-performers - of whom I hope have none on my team.

I have a tendency to pick with my heart, because I've found that if I don't like my team then I just don't enjoy hockey pool. If someone is on my team and I don't like them - for whatever reason - I get upset if they don't do well. Whereas if I like a person and they don't do as well as I'd like, I forgive them, because I like them. As I told someone yesterday, I'm a girl and it's just the way I am.

After hockey pool, it was straight out to Ann Arbor for Rollins Spoken Word: Provoked concert. I had never seen him before although I've always wanted to go. We had Row H and GtG made sure I had the center seat so I could see. I lucked out completely by having absolutely no one sitting directly in front of me, so I had an unobstructed view the entire night. He went on right at 8:03 and didn't stop even to take a drink of water until 11:00 p.m. when he said Good Night and walked off the stage. He was so utterly brilliant and I'm bummed that I have missed his previous shows.

I've been tagged by FWG to do a book survey, but I haven't had time to get to do it quite yet. Soon, though. I'll work on it, since it seems to be one that's going to take some thought.

Tuesday, October 02, 2007

September Movies & Books

I'm home sick from work. And I'm not happy. I had started not to feel well on Saturday, I guess, although I didn't realise it as I thought I was simply hungover. My first clue was when driving to knitting club that night and I wasn't speeding. Not only was I not speeding, I wasn't even doing the speed limit. That only happens when I'm super tired or not feeling well. I got up Sunday morning for church even though Mom wasn't in town and had to leave before 11:00 since I was not myself. I came home and climbed into bed and slept for over two hours.

I didn't feel like doing anything after my nap and just veged on the couch waiting for bed time. I went to bed at 7:00 p.m. I snoozed Monday morning for two hours and then got up and sent the bossman an e-mail saying I was staying home. I slept until 8:30, when I got up, took a shower and called the doctor for an appt., and was back in bed by 9:30 and I slept until 12:30. My dr.'s appt. was at 1:30 and I got to drive 30 miles not feeling well in driving rain. I saw more accidents on that trip. It was craziness.

I had a retirement party to attend yesterday afternoon at the University. One of my political science profs who had left my department (Social Sciences) to go to another department and start a Masters in Public Administration was finally retiring. He's one of the good eggs, so I was happy that Carol L had forwarded me the e-mail. I got to see a good number of people I do miss from my U days. The Famous (or is that Infamous) Uncle Bernie was there and as always he asked me if I still live "at that kibbutz." Yup, I replied. A good number of my fellow collegians have lived in my apt. buildings over the years, hence "kibbutz." He's a very funny guy, my Uncle Bernie.

I crashed early last night after the debauchery (ha ha) that is a University retirement party (and picking up my antibiotics). I got up and went to work this morning but left by 9:30 and was home and in bed by 10:00 and took another three hour nap. I've been up for 30 minutes and I feel like I could go right back to bed.

Instead, it's on to the Books read and Movies watched in the 9th month of this year.

Books

The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald - 297 pages - with this book I finish with F. Scott Fitzgerald. He has some books of short stories I could read if I were so inclined, but I don't like short stories as a general rule and after this book I'm pretty much done with F. Scott. I bloody well hated this book. It was all I could do to finish it. His two main characters, Anthony and Gloria Patch, were not in the least bit likable. The book reminded me of the Shopoholics series (a series I despised with every fiber of my being) in that these people had no concept of money. Hell, I know I'm no financial whiz kid, but I'm pretty clear on the concept of going to work to make money to pay my bills. I hurried through the end of this book because I was not going to let this be the only book I read and have to declare it Book of the Month.

Under Orders by Dick Francis - 369 pages - I love and adore Dick Francis and when I saw a paperback at Borders last month with his name on it I about fell over because I had heard that he wasn't going to write anymore after the death of his wife, Mary. I was very upset that I had missed it coming out in hardback, but I decided to live with the disappointment of having it in paperback. It was brilliant and exciting and very much worth waiting the year for, although I'm still not happy about it. I remember asking about a new book from him sometime last year and being told he wasn't writing anymore. I guess I was a few months early in that request. If you have never read a Dick Francis mystery, you are cheating yourself of a good time. All his books take place within the world of horse racing and although I've never ridden a horse and in fact, they scare the crap out of me and you won't find me near one, I love all his books.

Book of the Month: Under Orders by Dick Francis, of course!!!

Movies

Firefly - the entire series. It made me sad all over again that there was only the one season.

The Day The Earth Stood Still (N) 1951 - 93% - After Fermi and Schprockie recommended this in the same week, I put it in my Netflix queue. I have to say that although I am generally skeptical of sci-fi (yeah, I know, ignore my Babylon5, SG-1 and Firefly ways), especially 1950s sci-fi, this was a very good movie. I appreciated the anti-war message, in particular.

A Touch of Fate (N) 2003 - No rating - I had caught most of this movie on some high number channel the day I got my digital cable box installed, but I had to leave before the movie was over and I had to know what happened, so I Netflixed it. It was pretty Lifetime movie-ish I must say, but there is a part in the movie where Teri Hatcher punches out her big beefy cheating fiance and that part alone was worth the time spent. It looks like she actually hauls off and knocks him off his feet. Not that I advocate violence or anything like that.

The Magnificent Seven (Cable) 1960 - 92% - I had sworn that I wasn't going to watch this movie until I saw The Seven Samurai, but it was on cable and it just begged for me to watch it. It's still on my Netflix queue because I want to watch it again after The Seven Samurai (it's #2 in my queue) and the movie after The Seven Samurai starts my very own personal Steve McQueen Film fest. I'm sure everybody but me has seen The Magnificent Seven, so I don't have to say much. I loved the three little kids who idolised Charles Bronson.

Libel (N) 1959 - Not rated, hell, it's not even listed at rottentomatoes.com - This was the first movie I DVRd with my brandnew from Comcast DVR (I had one for a week that simply refused to work - talk about frustrating, I was on the phone with Comcast daily). Dirk Bogarde played three different roles in this movie, although IMDB only has him down for two. It was a very good movie with a neat little twist.

Downtown 81 - (N) 1981 - 71% - I added this to my Netflix queue after my friend Jason recommended it. (Apparently Jason didn't recommend this movie, so sorry for the misinformation.) I hated this movie, but I just couldn't get into it at all. I did enjoy the King Creole and the Coconuts songs, but basically that was it. I thought the acting was stilted and I was bored most of the time. I hated it so much I didn't even bother with most of the Extras which I normally love.

Serenity - (K) 2005 - 81% - When I finished watching Firefly, I, of course, had to watch Serenity once again. I'm still pissed at who got killed off. And I'm still waiting for another movie. *sigh*

The Ramones: Raw (Cable) 2004 - No rating - I DVRd this off VH1 Classic one night. If you're going to watch ONE documentary on The Ramones, don't pick this one, go with End of the Century, it's significantly better. Raw was more home movie-ish and it just didn't work for me.

Highlander: The Source (Sci-Fi Channel) 2007 - No rating - I was really looking forward to this movie. It reunited Peter Wingfield (whom we all know I love) and Adrian Paul and Jim Byrnes from the TV show which was fabulous - the TV show, not this movie. I actually kept notes during the movie it sucked so badly and I didn't want to forget my pithy comments. Here are my notes: "post-apocalyptic crap" - you would have thought they had learned their lesson with the second Highlander movie which everybody acknowledges as pure crap, "Shitty cinematography technique" which consisted of "funky lighting" and incredibly sped up fight scenes (hokey). At the very beginning of the movie, they introduced someone as one of only two people who could lead whomever to The Source...yeah, he died 15 minutes into the movie. This movie was complete dreck. The only high point being seeing Peter Wingfield in black motorcycle leather. And I'm thinking that won't work for most of you. Hell, it wasn't enough for me to ever watch it again. Stick with the TV show, that's what I say.

Movie of the Month: The Day The Earth Stood Still

It is now time for me to go back to bed.

Postscript: I just read over at Sal's (I'm sorry I just don't feel up to linking today) that it's Banned Book Week 2007. Here's a List of Most Frequently Challenged Books. I had Native Son by Richard Wright on my bookshelf, so I have decided to start reading it in honor of this most important event.

About Me

My favorite season is summer because I used to spend it traveling the continent going to Champ Car races, but thanks to a certain selfish pig of a Hoosier (TFG), I no longer have what I loved most in this world. I hate big heavy winter coats that make it uncomfortable getting into the car.